Archive for the ‘Asia’

I have been silent for a while because a lot has been boiling around here writing wise. As a good example of what keeps me from blogging more frequently, this month I debuted on AirAsia’s inflight magazine Travel 3Sixty.

It’s a story about the Horse Festival of Litang in Sichuan, shot as usual by Chan Kit Yeng. Click on the picture above to be redirected to a digital version of Travel 3Sixty’s September 2014 issue and let me know what you think in the comments section.

From HINDRAF to PERKASA, from COMANGO to Amnesty International, from ISMA to the KKK, what role do fringe voices play in our society? How important are they in driving discourse? What is their role in literature and the arts? Should they be heard? Should they be silenced?(more…)

I’m glad to announce that the third volume of bestselling Malaysian dark side anthology KL NOIR – BLUE will be launched on Monday 21st August, and I’m in with an epically graphic story, “Bathroom Wall” – an obvious citation to Faster Pussycat’s cheesy hit, and an ode to the average Malaysian Friday Night’s man.

According to FIXI, the first print of the book has sold out to shops even before the book’s officially out, so congratulations to them, to editor fantastic Eeleen Lee, and to all the authors involved.

Here’s a synopsis:

“KL Noir returns and the third time’s a charm with this selection of 15 stories about law and disorder in the metropolis. Direct from the recesses of the city lurk tales of murder, suicide, rival gangs, robbers and sleaze, mixed in with dystopian visions, black magic and the occasional decomposed corpse. Plunge deep into the underworld where the guilty and innocent rest in peace — or rest in pieces.“

And now, I’ll give you a quick sneak preview of my story:

“Still in disbelief, I feverishly pointed the cursor over the attachment and clicked on it. She was right: a piece of her was looking at me from the screen, stretched into a striped micro top that did not leave much imagination as to the shape of her breasts. They protruded from the upper left side of the picture, profiling a gracious line that curved down to connect with her exposed stomach. Her belly button was like a vortex in the midst of an ocean of white flesh without any ripples — flat and inviting.“

For more masturbation material, buy the book at every major Malaysian and Singaporean bookstore, or wait until I post an Amazon purchase link.

There will be a launch at bookstore magnificus Kinokunya KLCC, in Kuala Lumpur, on Monday 21st from 8 to 9 p.m. I will be of course reading and make an ass out of myself as usual, so please come and bring the rotten tomato bags… but be prepared: I will fight back!

Also, keep tuned as my first sweet’n’sour travel-noir will be featured on yet another of FIXINOVO’s upcoming short story anthologies, “Lost in Putrajaya”.

My recent debut on Roads and Kingdoms, “The Dark Joys of Bengalcore” where I tell about my exploration of Bangladesh’s capital extreme metal music scene, has been selected among writing worth reading by The Browser. This site crawls up the whole world wide web looking for very interesting material, and well, I guess they found my adventure quite enthralling.

Fantastic to be found among prose by the likes of greats such as William Dalrymple, and even Hunter S. Thompson. This warms up the heart very much.

The suggestion is to go and read the article then, as I’m not the only one to say it’s indeed pretty great.